China Unicom Ltd. said Friday it will sell Apple Inc.'s iPhone in China this year, ending months of rumor about when the hit phone would make its long-delayed debut in the world's most populous mobile market.

China's fast-growing number of mobile phone accounts has risen more than 8 percent since the start of the year to 592 million, while demand for traditional fixed-line service is falling, a state news agency reported Thursday.

Asia began to recover Thursday from a cyber-tsunami that for nearly two days disrupted international phone service, cut Internet access, slowed e-mail traffic to a crawl and gave office workers enough downtime to contemplate the dark side of living in a wired world.